Reading Roars!

The Oracle’s Santa Fe is to reopen as Ha! Ha!  Ha ha, I think not.  I liked Santa Fe. I liked its bar and Mexican beers such as Negro Modelo.  I liked its zingy food.  I liked the dramatic backdrop in the Gents of a solitary desert road stretching far into the distance.  I liked the decor.

Above all, I liked Santa Fe as it felt a little bit different (there were, in fact, only 6 in the country).  There are 26 Ha! Ha!s across the country, including another in Reading.  Ha ha!

The Evening Post reported on this news with the headline Town’s eateries are going global.  I don’t see what’s so global about a restaurant pledging to offer dishes that

celebrate the provenance of our country, such as Scottish smoked haddock, Welsh rack of lamb, and prime cut, 21 day aged British beef including rib eye on the bone.

Anyway, good luck to them.

Good luck also to Bella Italia, the “slice of Italian cuisine [that has] also arrived in The Oracle”, joining the slice next door that is Pizza Express, the slices that are Cafe Italia and Caffe Nero several units away and the slice that is Strada, also on the Riverside.  That’s a lot of slices.

And finally, the Pun of the Week prize goes to the Evening Post for their story about a local Page Three Idol contestant, who hopes to win a contract with The Sun:

A Reading teenager is keeping abreast of her career by getting to the last 16 of a modelling competition.

The article looks enormously popular on the Evening Post website: 62 comments and counting…

I’ve been doing a bit of spring (winter?) cleaning on this blog.  A number of other sites, mostly blogs, appear to have “died”, so I’ve deleted links pointing to these ghostly apparitions.  It’s a bit sad (only a bit) as these were once vibrant communities - and now they are gone.  Does any reader know of a blog cemetery?

Anyway, the entire Community category has now disappeared.  DateReading.com is “coming soon”, and Oxford Road Area Community Website and Talk Reading seem to be with us no longer (does anyone have information about these last two sites?).

Local author Julie Cohen, who writes sexy fiction for Headline Little Black Dress and Harlequin/Mills & Boon, has set her latest steamy book, One Night Stand, in Reading. Impressive enough. I was also impressed to discover her sparkling blog (it really is sparkling - see for yourself).

In a post published earlier in the week, Julie explains the Reading location in One Night Stand:

I decided to set the story in Reading for three very simple reasons. One was that I wanted something different from all the rom-coms set in London and New York and exciting places like that.

The second was because of my heroine, Eleanor, the erotic comedy writer. I wanted her to be dissatisfied with her life–her job during the day writing smut, her job during the evenings tending bar in a dodgy pub, her lacklustre love life, her mysterious and far too exciting sister June, her boring mother Sheila, her best friend Hugh’s penchant for bringing home a new blonde or redhead every night. A part of that was being dissatisfied with where she lived. Now Reading is actually a quite nice place to live, but it does have its down sides, and Eleanor sees them all. It’s part of her emotional journey to learn about where she lives and to discover that she’s part of the community.

The third, simplest, and possibly the most compelling reason, was that I live in Reading and I was really, REALLY pregnant and I could barely haul myself out of my chair to go to the bathroom several million times a day. There was no way I was going to go research some exotic location for this story.

Specific town locations used in One Night Stand include Forbury Gardens, Jacksons and the Madejski Stadium. The story concerns a bored erotica-writing barmaid named Eleanor who becomes pregnant following a one night stand with a stranger looking like George Michael.

You can buy One Night Stand for just £3.49 from Amazon.

The University of Reading and Henley Management College have agreed in principle to merge to create a new “world-class” (those words again: I’m seeing them everywhere these days) business school.

This makes sense to me.   Henley offers top MBA programmes and Reading has its brilliant ICMA Centre, providing world class finance training.  Let’s bang the two together.

In particular, I’m impressed by the following (stated in the press release):

The University of Reading will look to offer a broader perspective to the business schools’ teaching and research efforts through, for example, access to the university’s established expertise in environmental studies, including the developing understanding of climate change.

What an opportunity!  Our university has a leading reputation worldwide in modelling climate and climate change.   A firm understanding of Akaju sesli sohbethow industry impacts the environment should be an essential component of a business education.

First Great Western. What’s great about them? Guards on FGW trains have voted to hold a 48 hour strike, prompting the following words on I Hate First Great Western blog:

Sometimes the words “piss-up” and “brewery” come to mind when I think of the way that FGW try to run their bit of the railway. The words “bull” and “china shop” occur to me too, when you look at the way they deal with problems.

Look, we know there aren’t enough trains, the staff morale is low, the tracks need fixing and the stations aren’t big enough. We know all this. We just want you to sort it out. All we can see from our end is the cost of our tickets, and the constant failure to get us from A to B. Surely you can see why we might be as annoyed as the drivers who object to managers driving the trains. My message to First Great Western is take your hands away from your ears and stop shouting “la la la, I can’t hear you”. It’s good to talk, as they say.

Quite.

The same blog received the following comment from Akaju sesli sohbetMore Train Less Strain (”Campaigning for a decent rail service”):

If anyone from Reading or Maidenhead would like to help to coordiante a fare strike on the 28th JAN we want to hear from you. Email tambrose31@yahoo.co.uk.

Why not? The passengers have nothing to lose but their trains.

Much has been said in the papers recently about the rail chaos caused by engineering works and above-inflation increase in rail fares.  Will we (those who pay to use the trains) see improvements in 2008?  Please excuse my pessimism, but I doubt it.  Read the excerpt below from the Thunderer column in The Times.  Sound familiar? It was published 12 months ago:

Talking to the rail operator is getting nowhere. Overcrowding, delays and ever rising fares have left passengers with no option but direct action. It’s time to leap over the ticket barriers, burn our rail passes and send a message that the misery must end.

This is a day of mass protest on the railways in the West Country. The main operator, First Great Western (better known as Late Worst Western or even Sh*te Great Western), seems to have reverted to the post-Hatfield meltdown that all but paralysed the network a few years ago — only this time it is self-inflicted.

According to the Evening Post article ‘Foodie’ facelift for student pub, another town centre watering hole is giving itself a makeover. In a bid to target more locals, the popular student pub Upin Arms is to go upmarket by offering gourmet steaks and burgers (21 types, allegedly), installing new seating and adding Frulis, Akaju sesli sohbetBeck’s Vier and Staropramen.

It all seems rather like Oakford Social Club. Will students embrace the change or will they be up in arms over it?